If you want to organise other games please go ahead using the same topic to consolidate all the information in one place and hopefully get more games together within our community. These games are for PvP, PvAI & PvPvAIso come along and we'll get some games going!

Lore:We know some of you guys love to role play whilst using Distant Stars, and here's a topic for you guys to post all of your role playing stories, character profiles and anything else you can imagine.

Maps:Some of you avid map makers out there have produced some great maps but never really had them recognised because they've got lost. Well here's a topic for you to post a link to the download (we can even provide mirrors if necessary) a screenshot or two of the map for us all the preview and if enough people like it we'll even include the map in with the actual mod!

Please visit our website and for more information, change logs, downloads, and to report bugs. Our website can be found here: http://distantstars.mmobase.com

Please include as much information as possible, if you have an error log feel free to post it on these forums and we'll take it from there. If you can reproduce the error please include the error log (read below to find out how to enable error logs) and include as much detail on how to reproduce the problem.

Open the user.setting file (using Notepad, Wordpad or any text editor) and scroll down to the bottom 7 lines from the bottom is the line:LogOutput FALSEChange FALSE to TRUELogOutput TRUE

and from then on any Log files will be saved to the debug folder:Windows Vista/Windows 7: C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\DebugorWindows XP: C:\Documents and settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Debug

If you get these log files to us (you can just paste them in to a forum post) we can hopefully get your issues sorted.

Frequently Asked Questions

All files are compressed using 7Zip to shrink the download filesize. To extract these files you must use WinRAR or 7Zip.Any Patches should overwrite the original install directory, either by extracting over the original folder, or cut/copy & pasting over the existing file/folder structure.

1) My game keeps crashing, is there anything I can do to stop it?i) Are you running the game on maximum (highest) settings? if so, lower them to High or Medium, there is a known issue with the game using up too much memory, there is nothing we can do about this, also no matter how powerful your pc is, it is affected by this issue no matter the pc it is not above this crashing issue, it is a game problem not a hardware one, so quite simply lower your settings. If you still have an issue with crashing see point two.ii) Give us as detailed information as possible about the crash, what was happening at the time of the crash, what races, ships, abilities were involved. If you can supply a Debug Log (see above for more information about logging) and post a bug report on our website.

2) The loading screens and portrait pictures dont appear properly, whats wrong?i) This is an issue with ATI based graphics cards (rarely affects Nvidia based cards) we're looking in to the issue.

3) Why dont you support converting Distant Stars in to TXT format?i) Quite simply many things can go wrong with converting your mod to TXT, we cant help you with something you've probably broken yourself.

4) Can I mod Distant Stars for myself?i) Yes you can however please do not distribute our mod or our mod that you have edited to the public. You must ask for permission to do so, we will regrettably stop distributing our mod to all if users abuse our work.

5) Your mod is in BIN format I can't edit the files, what can I do?i) You can convert the mod to TXT format however we wont offer any support to versions of the mod that have been converted to TXT.

6) Why is Distant Stars distributed in BIN format?i) Mods load faster in BIN format and are less likely to have issues in this format.

8) Is there any way to make new maps for Distant Stars using GalaxyForge?i) Within the Distant Stars Extras folder there is a folder called Galaxy Forge, Copy and Paste this folder (or its contents) over your original Galaxy Forge folder (or its contents) replacing any files if it asks you to. When you start Galaxy Forge next you'll be able to use all of our planets.

Or, the DIY approach (without custom icons):

ii) The GalaxyForge supplied by the devs will still work with our Mod, however to be able to access all of our planetary bonuses, templates, planet types and stars you will need to take our GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (found in the GameInfo folder of the mod) and place it in to your GalaxyForge folder, overwriting the original GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (if you still wish to make maps for the original game keep a backup of the original file). This will allow you to use all of the Galaxy changes included in our mod.

Note: Any maps made for Distant Stars will not work with other Mods. See #8.2 for DIY instructions for map making or take the appropriate files from Entrenchment, they're cross-client compatible.

Some statistics...

Since August 2009 to February 2011 we have had over...

400,000 Unique visits to the website12,000GB (12TB) of data transferred from our website

That equates to over 60,000 Unique downloads of the entire mod, excluding the excess of 20,000 Patches downloaded.

Thanks to everyone that has supported us this far and making our mod as popular as it is!

Downloading it now to have a look. I'll have to convert it to 1.191 to play it though, but it shouldn't matter since I'm looking at visuals and not game play balance, however, based on the only picture I could find on it, it would appear that those planet types mentioned, the only real difference is that the planet had it's health bumped up, the ring chance was increased to 100%, probably some modeling done to make the rings look nicer...

I guess if I take screenies, I'll be nice and post them on their thread for them.

If that's the case, then they'd be more trouble then they're worth to incorporate.

Edit: Played it a bit, only saw one planet with large metal rings around it, otherwise, we already have all of the same planets, albeit with different textures. The extra races are combo races I believe, mixing aspects of two to make the third... My opinion, I didn't really see anything worth adding to DS that hasn't already been discussed and added or rejected, however, I love the fact that it's for Vanilla Sins since not too many people are going that route, so I'm personally going to hang onto a copy of it.

More planets is always good and I don't understand why they even put asteriods to colonize on this game. Is it possible to remove the asteriods from the game in the completion of the DS mod? If not then maybe consider removing the Dwaft planets instead.

I rationalize it this way: The bulk of matter in the asteroid belt is held up in very few rocks, so those few are points of interest regarding refueling and resources. Moreso, if we assume the phase lanes are products of nature, any point, even deep space sectors, are points of interest as determined by nature. If Mars was not connected via a phase lane, then it ceases to be of interest to our stellar exploration efforts.

i have been having a small annoying problem, the phase tunnel of the vasari, the passive sound, is loud and plays constantly even when i am not zoomed to that planet that has one, i tried destroying the tunnel but the sound persist even when all tunnels are gone, even through the save..

its not a one time thing, it keeps happening everytime on every map, any ideas?

Well, I did some playing around with the files controlling the sound and didn't get any real positive results from the tweaking. The issue seems to crop up because of files being copied repeatedly, or so goes the theory I've been told. I have figured out though, that (when I'm playing as the TEC) if you've destroyed the offending phase gate and allowed some time to pass so that the info card isn't showing a phase node active in the well anymore, to make the sound go away, get yourself into a big shootout, or just find one going on in the map somewhere, zoom all the way into a ship that's in the middle of things, ride out the weapons fire and explosions for 5 seconds or so, then zoom back out and the sound has mysteriously stopped.

A small disclaimer, I tried it again recently, I was playing as a Vasari, killed off another Vasari, had the phase sound looping, so I tried what I just described, and I just couldn't get it to work. Though I've reverted the files back to their originals so my tweaks are gone, so I'm probably going to go back and play with them again at some point soon.

Is this compatible with SOASE v1.191, Entrenchment v1.051 and/or "Trinity" (Diplomacy) v1.011; are their full downloads without all the patching -not even sure wtf to do with Entrenchment patch.

Yeah, been out of gaming for a while now, but mod looks nice and the GSDef file similar to the one I worked out for 7DS. You need some more "Bases" Good work. I just wanna play it and make some maps perhaps.

Version Compatibility -> I assume you can read, so let's review where the top post says:

Downloads

Yeah, there's little sections that say version compatibility, you might want to... Oh I don't know... Look at the numbers there and compare them to the one's in your questions...

SOASE 1.191 - No, 1.181 was the last official release. However, yes, it will work for 1.191 if you change/delete some files. You don't get all of the fun stuff playing this version though, not yet anyway, so no I'm not going to explain it.

are their full downloads without all the patching -not even sure wtf to do with Entrenchment patch.

Full downloads... *Sigh* Again, let's review where it says:

Downloads

Look for the version you want and more specifically the parts that say Full Download:

Yeah, you want that link. The patch is if you have an earlier version and don't want to or have the time to download the full version with the exception of the entrenchment 1.051. Only a patch was released for that update, so download the full version for either version of entrenchment (since they're the same) and then paste the 0.9951 patch over the other one to bring it up to 1.051 compatible, kind of like what the... yellow... letters... highlighted... in... red... say... Hmm.

Yeah, been out of gaming for a while now, but mod looks nice and the GSDef file similar to the one I worked out for 7DS.

You were a modder? No way!?! Wait... Looks nice? I thought you were having issues figuring out if it was even compatible... Oh well... If you think that GSDef file is nice, jump over to the multiplayer thread and look at the newer one. Much more stuff on that one... On second though, let's get you up and running on single player before we jump into multiplayer.

You need some more "Bases" Good work. I just wanna play it and make some maps perhaps.

More bases? 24 isn't enough? I think that's what the count was... Yep, had to go back a bunch of pages, but I found it. https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/335474/page/107/#2560161 The release change log for Dip 0.7.

If you need help figuring out how to "install" the mod, refer to FAQ #7 (Don't worry, the link has pictures)

Yeah yeah, another night of not going to sleep.... Multiplayer's gonna be strange later for sure... Yeah anyway, since I've got the time, and Carbon already volunteered me to make a new UI, I figured, what the hell. I had already updated all of the buttons for the DS Vanilla version while I was making it work with the latest version of the game, so I may as well do some other fun little things with it. Here's where I'm at with that. Not sold on the lettering yet, but the couple of styles I liked better I'm saving for the Entrenchment and Diplomacy UI's... Here are the 5 different screens that Sins uses.

Start Menu - You can't really see it, but it's a red star... Combined with the lettering it looked like the back of a Japanese deck of cards and I just liked it, so I ran with the lettering. Since it's basically something no one will see, I figure on using a yellow star for Entrenchment and a blue star for Diplomacy. The game get's hotter for each add-on you buy. Yeah, I did just incorporate some science. Deal with it.

Main Menu - This menu is spammed everywhere in the game, so I stitched 4 different battles together to make one nice one.

Friend Detail/Game Options Menu - I stitched together an image of each constructor ship because what's a friendlier sight then your builder ship getting to work building something nice for you? Well, besides 32 level 10 cap ships and hundreds of cruisers and frigates jumping in to lend you some aid...

Player Select Screen - You're lining up to play here, that fleet that was mid jump in the last picture... They got their picture taken while they were lining up to play with my enemies.

I also changed out that red stuff that was on the top of the boxes and replaced it with the planet that's on the mod's website, cropped like the image at the top of this page of course so it would fit and look decent. Yeah, so that's it for one night... Enjoy.

I'm not really familiar why you have to turn down your graphic settings to play Distant Stars, but anyway. Will the mod never work with highest details, because of the coding structure from SoaSE (or what is the reason?)? And is the mod compatible with the Sins Optimization Project Mod?

The reason it will never work on highest (It actually does work, just not for very long) is because Sins loads everything into memory before you play the game rather then on-demand like other games. The advantage is you never have to wait for loading while playing, the disadvantage is that the game reaches the 2Gig memory usage limit very fast and crashes when it tries to exceed that. This limit cannot be changed because it is a limit inherent to all 32 bit programs and Windows itself would not allow it even if we could change it. The only real way to fix it would be to rewrite the executable and make it a 64 bit program, but that would be in violation of the licensing agreement we all agreed to when we installed the game.

This mod is not compatible with Sins Optimization Project because the two projects are opposites. This mod is an enhancement mod, meaning it adds to the game making things bigger and better visually and in game play experience, whereas SOP goes in the complete other direction and takes things away from the game in an effort to get the game to run better. That's not to say that things haven't been 'optimized' in a similar fashion as SOP, in fact some things have been 'optimized' in order to enhance the playing experience and as SOP continues to develop, some of their work may be borrowed when it doesn't directly conflict with the nature of this mod.

God damn fucking LAA! GO AWAY!!!! I blame SupCom for this. It's not their fault, it's the fault of people not knowing what the hell they're doing and then spreading it around that they fixed something... These 'programs' pop up all of the time claiming to do something they really don't do, at least this one came with a read me that kind of half way explained things.

So here's some education for you.

There's this:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/335474/page/111/#2571696

and this:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/335474/page/124/#2623746

and this:

http://sinsdistantstars.wikia.com/wiki/Tips

and this:

and many more things all over the net... I'm just too tired to care to look for them and filter out all the bullshit incorrect information giving sites.

So now that you're up to date on what LAA is, I'm just going to say that no, don't bother with that "booster" unless you're absolutely at your lowest settings and still having issues, and even then don't bother because if you're having issues at the lowest settings, then your computer sucks, I mean is old and won't be able to take advantage of it anyway.

thanks stant, yes you are a condescending of a . I've been out of the loop, not down for a coma. When I ask if the frakking Mod works for specific versions, since your don't speak for the team -don't be an ass or people will figure out just why you aren't, just give a yes/no. If you are part of the team, don't make them look like asshats by association. I asked because in my prior experience with the 7DeadlySins mod, any changes StarClad made or information withheld could have dire consequences.

I figured it was a matter of copy/paste, but I'd rather ask than frak something up beyond recognition. Regarding Bases... sure, more the merrier I say. Yes, I loved making the vasari/advent militias, making the 7 Deadly Sins GSDef file for mapping kick ass maps, and love the work Distant Stars has done.Check "Template:DefaultStart_Grave", "groups 19" there is a lot on the same line that seems out of place."Template:StrongHold1" and "Template:StrongHold2"; is it possible to vary the "Fleet" so you don't always have the same forces arrayed or are they like pirates in that you really can't do that? All I notice is that all urban worlds have massive forces without any real difference.